by C. E. Murphy
“No,” she said for the second time, to Sacha, letting exasperation and amusement fill her voice. “We do not still paint ourselves orange and blue and go into battle naked. Lanyarchan nights are too cold for such things.”
“I’m crushed,” Sacha replied. “I’ve always hoped we might pick a war with Aulun so we could see the northern savages in their full and painted glory.”
Belinda leaned in, dropping her voice to confidentiality. Sacha, an easy mark, shifted to hear her better. To her delight, the other three, Eliza with a degree of reluctance that was overcome by interest, leaned in as well, leaving them all clearly within hearing distance as Belinda infused her voice with both gentleness and mockery. “I assure you, the women of Lanyarch have long since been too sensible to join such war parties. I can only gather, then, that you have an abiding desire to see the full glory of a naked man. I cannot promise the wonder that’s a Lanyarch man, but if you are truly desperate for the sight of armies of naked men, I suggest you visit the baths, my lord Asselin.”
Asselin spluttered. James threw his head back and laughed, pure as bells. Belinda sat back, smugness playing around her mouth. Beside her, Marius puffed with pride and delight, his own cackles of amusement a deeper counterpoint to James’s laughter. Even Eliza’s mouth curved with disapproving humour as she poured Asselin another glass of wine.
“You lost that one, Sacha.” The final score was voiced by James, who shook his head, grinning, and gestured at Eliza. “All around, sister dearest, and let’s have a drink to Marius’s good taste in women.”
The request slowed Eliza, her gaze darting to Belinda before she shrugged, an expression built more with the faint twist of her mouth and a flare of her nostrils than with a lift of her shoulders. Belinda saw it; the men did not. In response, in gratitude and in acknowledgment, Belinda lowered her head and eyes very briefly. Another degree of tension faded away, given voice by the full measure of wine Eliza poured into Belinda’s glass. Belinda curled her fingers around the stem, thanks offered in the lifting of the glass and the glance through her eyelashes. Submission, not challenge: Belinda had no desire to oust Eliza from her family of friends. To do so would offer far too much disruption, and Belinda’s purpose was to infiltrate, not destroy.
“To young love and new friends,” James suggested. The toast was echoed around the table, music of crystal tapping against itself cutting through the warm thick air for a few seconds and lingering as the five drank.
“We make a habit,” James said when the toast was drunk, “of meeting here on Monday nights. I think I speak for all of us when I say you would be welcome to come again, Lady Irvine. And not only because we fear we might never see our Marius again if we failed to extend the invitation.” He grinned and lifted his glass to Marius, who returned both expression and gesture before they drank.
Satisfaction broke through Belinda’s breathing, making her feel as though she had been taking shallow, careful breaths all evening. It loosened a band of risk from around her heart and she inhaled deeply. “So I’ve passed,” she said, a little surprised to hear herself voice the words aloud. James and Sacha exchanged startled looks and laughter, while Marius stiffened with indignation and Eliza slumped with wry acceptance. Belinda found a smile in herself and bumped her elbow into Marius’s. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she murmured to him. “It was a test. You know it as well as I do.” To the others, she said, “A test that I’m both relieved and pleased to have passed. You’re a somewhat overwhelming lot.”
“You do a remarkable job of not seeming overwhelmed,” Asselin said drily. “So remarkable, in fact, that neither your wit nor your beauty appear to be in the slightest bit damaged by your quaking fear of us.”
“Beauty, my lord? Without meaning to seem trite, beauty is only diminished or granted in the eye of the beholder.” Belinda hesitated, glancing at Eliza. “At least in my case.” She let a trace of honest envy creep into the words, and Eliza’s eyes narrowed, although not in anger. “I think if you find me beautiful you have become too jaded by the presence of genuine beauty in your life. I know where I can and cannot hold a candle, my lord.” Belinda looked back at Asselin, then let herself smile, bright and quick. “I will grant you, though, that my wit is nearly unmatchable. Even when the company has me quivering in my boots.”
“Enough,” James said with an amused snort. “As I’ve said, Lady Irvine, we’ll have you, if you’ll have us. What say you?”
Belinda let stillness fill her, its soothing darkness calming her from the centre of her being to her extremities. It felt cool enough that she wondered if the wine in her glass might chill slightly from her own extending reserve. She knew her answer; there was only one she could reasonably give, but she needed the few moments away from Beatrice, to examine her own position and what she was about to broach.
The red-haired man sitting across from her was the linchpin of the foursome; it was he whom they acknowledged in subtle ways as their leader. He made the toasts, made the invitations; he made the other three answer to his will by nothing more than a tiny gesture of his hand. His long fingers were steepled in front of him now, eyebrows lifted as he waited for Belinda’s answer. He was the reason Belinda had been permitted into the club on Marius’s arm.
Belinda let stillness go in a quiet, deep exhalation, and laid her cards on the table. “My lord Javier,” she said into waiting silence, “I would be honoured.”
Dismay made sharp by anger penetrated Belinda down to her bones, rolling in waves off the men and woman she sat with. Accusation hung in the air; Javier turned his gaze, mild and direct, to Marius.
“No,” Belinda said before Marius could protest. “He’s not at fault, my lord. Even with our queen in exile we know what the heir to our throne looks like.” Her voice remained quiet, but sharpened with intensity. “We know what the true heir to the Aulunian throne looks like.” She felt the passion behind her own words, pure conviction as spoken by a noblewoman whose religion had been suppressed by a calculating and heartless foreign queen. Javier lifted his head sharply, flexing his fingers outward in the same small gesture that had stilled his compatriots. Belinda, abashed, ducked her head and turned her face to the side in apology. Her heart pounded too hard, blood coppery and thick in her throat. She tried to swallow the taste back, but it stayed lodged there, and she realised with slow surprise that she was genuinely afraid.
“You are too bold, my lady Beatrice.” The reprimand in Javier’s voice was as profound as any Belinda had heard from her father or even her queen. It was nothing in the words, themselves innocuous enough, nor the tone, as mild as milk. Rather it was the combination, and her own personal awareness of who it was she faced. That, Belinda thought, was the measure of true power and strength. She hunched her shoulders, her belly tightening, and tried not to squirm under Javier’s steady gaze. Finally she whispered, “I apologize, my lord,” and Javier lifted his chin with satisfaction.
“We were pleased with our charade, my lady. Why did you not let it continue?”
Belinda dared a glance up, unable to judge from his voice whether the “we” he employed was royal or encompassed the other three at the table. Eliza’s dark gaze, unreadable, caught her with a stab of guilt. Asselin, to Javier’s other side, watched with a faint smile. Marius would not meet her eyes. Belinda took in a shaking breath and forced herself to straighten her spine. She saw a glimpse of something in Javier’s eyes. Approval? Amusement? The other three were more easily read than the prince.
“I did not like to begin a relationship under false pretenses, my lord.” Internal amusement at her own audacity boiled over for a moment, breaking through habitual stillness. Belinda dropped her eyes, to don the apparel of Beatrice again before she looked up. “Had I not recognized you, the power would have been yours to betray, but I…I prefer an honest hand, my lord. It is, I am told, a Lanyarchan weakness.” She quavered a smile, and, not receiving one in return, let it fall away in discomfort.
“You might have lied,”
Javier said. “Might have kept up the pretense, confessing great surprise and shock at the truth when it was granted you.”
Beatrice, not Belinda, stared across the table at the prince in forthright astonishment. She heard Asselin’s chuckle, and saw Eliza roll her eyes in disgust. “It’s not in her, Jav,” Marius said from beside her, as quiet as could be. “I told you. She hasn’t got dissembling in her.”
Oh, Marius. The thought struck through Belinda with a bright ache, making her breath catch with its clarity. You sweet, innocent fool. There is no such thing as a woman without deceit, no more than there is a man.
“I did not mean to give offense, my lord,” she heard herself whispering. “I am not good at play-acting. Please. Forgive me if I’ve gone too far.” Belinda lifted her gaze again, letting it soften in hope and fear. Her father could withstand the pleading expression, but most men, even many women, mellowed under it.
Javier was no exception. He snorted, a sound of exasperation that meant the moment of tension was over, and waved an elegant, long-fingered hand, as if clearing the air of deception. Eliza rolled her eyes again and Belinda’s shoulders relaxed fractionally. “Too clever by half, Marius,” Javier said. “This one’s too clever by half.”
“Yes, my prince,” Marius said with such complete obsequience that it was clear he masked overwhelming smugness. Laughter broke, clearing away the remaining strain that lingered around the table. Javier sighed, leaning forward.
“It is occasionally tedious-”
“Occasionally?” Asselin asked with a snort very much like Javier’s of a moment earlier. Javier shot him a look of exasperation and Asselin widened his eyes in pretended innocence, then made himself ostentatiously busy pouring wine. “Frequently tedious,” Javier said, acknowledging Asselin drily even as he looked at Belinda, “to be royalty, my lady Beatrice.”
One corner of Belinda’s mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t know, my lord.” She tried, very briefly, to reach for the idea of a world where she would know, but she had put away those dreams and imaginations so long ago that it was as if they lay behind a thick glass wall. They were visible, but obscured and twisted by the warp of glass, no more reachable than the moon.
Her male companions laughed. Eliza sat back, sprawling in the booth seat, her shoulder brushing Javier’s as she reached for and held her wineglass.
“Think of all the aspects you don’t care for of nobility,” Javier suggested, “and multiply them tenfold.”
Belinda’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Wealth, a good home, food on my table, warm nights? My lord, even the most dull evening spent embroidering is a vast improvement over sleeping with the pigs. I wed nobility, minor as it may have been, and have found very little cause for complaint in it.”
Her eyes were on Javier, but it was Eliza she watched. Eliza whose shoulder pressed into Javier’s a little harder, and whose mouth became a thin line. Her gaze dropped, a smirk flaring her nostrils before she looked up again, full of easy confidence and dislike for Belinda. Belinda allowed herself a tiny burst of satisfaction, deep inside. Unlike her friends, the stunning woman had not been to the manner born; gutter vowels and rough words were natural to her, not the cultivated tones she’d no doubt learned from Javier himself.
And the prince seemed to hold no awareness of Eliza’s wordless mockery. Belinda wondered if he had ever seen the other woman’s real home, whether he could truly appreciate the difference between his station and Eliza’s. Whether he grasped on any useful level that sleeping with the pigs was not a colourful expression, but that people did it, for their own warmth and to keep safe the lives of animals upon which their own lives depended. Belinda did; Belinda had lived that life more than once, out of necessity. But that was Belinda, and not the role she played; Beatrice had been born landed, and not come from a place that low. Belinda could see no way to use the common experience as a bridge between herself and Eliza, not without damning her own persona as a liar.
Javier, as Belinda watched, leaned back into Eliza with the affection one might show a large dog: rough and tumble, awareness of her presence without acknowledgment of her astounding beauty. Belinda thought she was right: years of exposure had dulled the men to their companion’s comeliness. She doubted very much that Eliza was equally unaware of the prince’s charms.
He wasn’t as pretty as Marius. The ginger hair and accompanying complexion lacked Marius’s warmth and ruddy health. His eyes were yellow in the firelight, absorbing its color rather than holding forth with any of their own. He was more delicate, more elegant, than the young merchant sitting at her side, and next to Asselin’s sturdy form he looked elfin. Eliza, at his other side, made an excellent dark mirror to his grace; if she were nobility, Belinda imagined they would already be wed. She thought Eliza might imagine the same thing, and was sure the idea had barely crossed Javier’s mind.
He was studying her now, pale eyebrows drawn down in thought. “Are you chastising me, Lady Irvine?”
“If you feel sufficient guilt in your station that my comment strikes you as chastisement, my lord, then yes, I probably am.” Belinda arched her eyebrows slightly, knowing she lay down a challenge. Javier’s eyes narrowed. Beside her, Marius inhaled a deep breath of caution, but the words were already spoken, and she met Javier’s eyes with her own forthright gaze, waiting.
The air between them…flexed. Belinda saw the subtle hand motion, the stretching of Javier’s fingers that had stilled not only his lifetime companions, but even herself, not so long before. But this time it accompanied something more, a test of Belinda’s will versus Javier’s own. It was as if he put his shoulder into a stubborn, stuck door, expecting it to give way with a single shove. Belinda had felt men wield power before, knew the confidence that came with a lifetime of making decisions and being respected.
This was more. This was imposition, Javier’s will intending domination not through fear or respect, but simply because he could. And even that didn’t go far enough; Belinda had known men like that, too, who forced themselves and their desires on others because they had the strength that others did not. Javier seemed to have none of the impulse toward cruelty that such men-like Gregori-had, nor any apparent lack of confidence that often fed the need to domineer. This was less hurtful than those things; this was merely an extension of the man, an extension that edged on familiarity. He expected to triumph; he would, without question, triumph. His centre of confidence held, waiting for her to break.
Instead, she understood.
It felt like the stillness. Externally imposed, active rather than protective, but it carried that calm centre of invulnerability. Nothing could touch that force of will, and because nothing could touch it, no one could resist it. The thrill of recognition shot through Belinda’s body in sensual excitement, bringing on a shiver. Never in her life had she felt anything like her stillness within another; never, in fact, had she even imagined she might encounter such a subtle and personalized power. Her pulse jumped in her throat, excitement desiring to overwhelm her facade of calm. She pushed it down, tingling with curiosity and enthusiasm, and for a moment another emotion swam over her, as it had done in the Maglian pub. Expectation radiated from Eliza and the other two men, and from Eliza, too, a sense of smug satisfaction. They knew, all of them, that Belinda would succumb to the prince’s will and offer up an apology. It was as sure as the sun rising in the east.
Belinda lifted her chin, her fingers wandering to stroke the hollow of her throat, vulnerable and inviting. Javier shifted his weight forward, barely enough to perceive, and Belinda held her breath, judging the spark in the air between them.
It didn’t flex again, Javier’s will already loosened, but the core-so different, what she felt from him, compared to the stillness she had learned to hide herself in. He had chosen to channel his energies another way, into activity. That dynamic core within him pressed its advantage, seeing Belinda showing weakness in the most flattering form a woman could offer it, sexual availability. She could feel, almost as
if she were in his skin, the heat of want that spread from his groin and fed his hidden strength. Belinda encouraged it a few seconds, retreating into herself. Javier leaned forward another fraction of an inch.
Belinda wrapped golden stillness around herself so nothing could touch her, and met the prince’s gaze without fear.
Javier flinched.
He flinched, then straightened, mouth slightly open with surprise. He wet his lips, tongue caught between his teeth for an instant, before a slow, appreciative smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Then I had best reconsider my complaints, had I not? Perhaps I speak of things that I do not well understand.”
Eliza’s scowl darkened again; beside her, Belinda felt Marius slump in unsurprised dismay. There was danger in introducing any woman to a friend, but especially when the friend was a prince. Marius had not expected to lose her so quickly, but he felt the change in energy between them, knew something invisible had passed between them, and laid open a new path for them to follow. Then he squared his shoulders, jaw set with determination. Belinda almost smiled at his resolution: he could not have said it more clearly if he’d spoken the words out loud. Javier could not be expected to wed a minor noble from a country so ill thought of it was often called Northern Aulun rather than by its own name. Marius would not give up his own hopes yet. He would fight for the lady’s hand, and only accept defeat graciously when he had no other choice. Belinda admired him for it even as the prince’s curious energy drew her toward him. Only Asselin watched without changing demeanor, the lying, raw honesty that defined him in Belinda’s mind seeming to shield him from the shock of a woman crossing swords with his prince.